The Cancer Committee continued to meet quarterly during 2008. The cancer program, as one can see from this report, has multiple components and all of these continue to be supervised by the Cancer Committee.

The highlights of the year included a final report from the American College of Surgeons who surveyed our program in July of 2007 and in the final report we achieved full approval, but also six out of a possible nine Areas of Commendation: Standard 2:11 - Outcomes Analysis; Standard 3.7 - Quality of NCDB Data Submission; Standard 4.3 - AJCC Staging; Standard 6.2 - Prevention and Early Detection; Standard 7.2 - CTR Attended National Cancer-related Education Activity; Standard 8.2 - Cancer-related Quality Improvements.

We had been having some difficulty with radiology attendance at our Tumor Board. This problem has been solved and radiologists now attend the conference via telephone linkage. This has worked out very nicely and their input is much appreciated.

One negative during the year was the loss of our American Cancer Society Navigator and at this point we are attempting to adapt to this loss and still provide important programming to our patients.

There continues to be a good deal of work with Willmar Medical Services which will be the apparent corporation over our pending cancer center. This entity will "go live" January 1, 2009.

It has been another exciting year.

J. Michael Ryan, M.D.